Most anti-virus companies like to release yearly reports based on their findings throughout the year. Panda Security is no exception and has released its ‘2012 Annual Security Report’. In this report you will find some stats that may or may not shock you.

Of all the computers scanned by Panda Security’s security software in 2012, an astonishing 31.98% were infected by some form of malware. 76.56% of these infections were by Trojans, 8% by viruses, 6.44% by worms, 5.72% by adware and spyware, and 3.28% by ‘other’ (probably rootkits).

When ranked by country, China, South Korea, and Taiwan, take the top three spots for most infected computers with an infection rate of 54.89%, 54.15%, and 42.14% respectively. The top three countries with the lowest amount of infections are Sweden (20.25%), Switzerland (20.35%), and Norway (21.03%).

It isn’t entirely clear which operating system these infections are on but considering the fact that Panda Security offers security software for only Windows[2] and Mac[3] in the computer domain and Windows dominates in numbers over Mac, these infections are probably mostly on Windows PCs. But they probably include some Macs, too, seeing as a few malware outbreaks hit Mac OS X this past year.

Another interesting tidbit released by Panda Security is a stat that “27 million new malware strains found in 2012, at an average of 74,000 new samples per day”. 74,000 a day. Dang.